Chapter 19

Legion holds on to Shepard, the man's warm skin exciting its sensors. Little sparks of excitement dance through the geth's own, synthetic skin, dazzled nerve endings' signals mingling to form a fuzzy cloud over its perception. Legion looks into Shepard's eyes, crystalline blue, twin wells reaching deep down. Legion remembers the first time it saw those eyes, remembers how it dismissed the notion of a soul. Now, it is less sure. There is a glimmer of light behind Shepard's eyes, soft, achingly beautiful, and in a way that is beyond Legion's comprehension, also terribly sad. There's a stab in Legion's chest, a painful twinge of doubt as it suddenly wonders if Shepard sees such a light in its own eye. It looks deeper, mesmerized by the sense of staring into Shepard, and the longing, twisting feeling as it hopes desperately that there is something to see within itself, something beyond cold steel and wires.

Shepard's hand slides down its arm as he pulls away, standing up gently and pacing away from the table. Legion's eye follows him as he turns away from the geth, runs a hand over his face. His shoulders seem to slump a little, and as Legion watches he turns back to the table.

Shepard's mouth turns up a little, almost a smile but not quite, and the sad look glitters in his eyes again. "Legion," he says quietly. "You... being here, now... You have no idea what this means to me."

Legion feels the twisting, aching sensation again, and the unbalancing feeling of being poised right on the tip of a turning point. It looks up at Shepard's face again, then looks back down as an unseen hand savagely wrenches its insides. Does... Does this... The question tempts, but now is not the time. And the feeling comes back, of being on the verge of a pivotal action, the point of no return. Legion realizes that this is where no geth has ever gone before. It locks eyes with John, ignoring the pain, because beyond the ache of doubt, and the doubt of doubt, is a spark. Legion feels it pulse, a white-hot compass tip. All the other feelings would not even be if not for this one.

It looks levelly along the line of the compass, right into the twin blue orbs that have caused all the pain and happiness it has felt over the last week, that it has ever felt, and it says, "We would like to know, Shepard."

…

Tali'Zorah vas Normandy runs a three-fingered hand through her hair, silvery-white strands falling nearly to her back. It's a relief to shake it out after spending nearly every waking hour in a helmet. Quarian enviro-suits keep the body clean, but after the stress of the past week Tali feels justified in indulging herself.

EDI had assured her the bathrooms on the ship aren't a hazard to her Quarian immune system, so while the Normandy burns its way through space to the nearest mass relay, she's come up to the crew deck for the rare luxury of a shower. In the middle of the day there shouldn't be a problem with privacy, but even if anyone dose come in, Tali's not sure that she cares. It's no big secret what Quarians look like under their masks; any curious crew member could have easily found out via extranet search by now anyway.

She turns the water tap, sighing in pleasure as the hot water hits her head and back. She turns, letting the spray caress her face, and can feel the stress leaving her in an almost physical wave. And humans just take this for granted, she thinks. Someday our children will, too. Keelah, I hope they will...

"Enjoying yourself?"

Tali yelps in surprise, whipping her head around. Garrus leans against the wall just inside the closed door, regarding her with something like amusement. He's wearing his crisp blue turian civvies, looking slightly out of place without his armor. Out of place like a wild animal in clothes; strangely amusing and dangerous at the same time.

Tali tries to scowl at him, but she can't hide her happiness at seeing him. Garrus strides leisurely over to her. He reaches out a hand and runs a single talon through her hair, predatory eyes locking with hers, taking her breath away. As always. Tali feels a shiver run along her scalp, and almost unconsciously she moves nearer to him.

Garrus leans his forehead down to hers, twisting the silver lock around his finger. "You're so cute when you're pretending to be mad," he purrs.

Tali forces herself to back up a little, hoping the steam hides the reddening in her cheeks. Dammit, he knows what that voice does to me! "Call me 'cute' again and you'll see what happens when I'm not pretending, Vakarian," she says, turning away from him. The heat of the water in front of her counters the heat of Garrus's body as he comes up behind her and places his hands on her shoulders. "You shouldn't be here anyway," she says as Garrus begins to massage the back of her neck and shoulders. "There could be females in here!"

The deep rumble of turian laughter sends warm tingles down her spine. "I thought that was the point of the female restroom, Miss vas Normandy."

"You're awful, Garrus."

He laughs again, his rough hands working the tension out of her muscles. She leans back into them, reveling in the joy of sensation. Another thing we can't take for granted. Feeling through the suit is like seeing in black and white, and Garrus's hands on her bare back are like fireworks, each touch an explosion of color. She sighs a little, closing her eyes.

For a while the sound of rushing water fills the cabin, then Garrus speaks again, this time an almost tentative tone creeping into his voice at sub-vocal level. "Tali..."

"Mmm?"

"I... actually need to talk to you about something."

Tali cocks her head. She's still getting used to reading the subtle shifts in harmonics that turians use instead of body language, but she knows enough to see that something's troubling her turian. Mine. It sends a delightful shiver through her, and she smiles a little at the thought. "What is it, Garrus?"

"It's... Well, this thing," he says, now with blatant hesitancy in his voice. "With the batarians, you know. We don't even know what we're charging into. Hell, we never do! This suicide mission too, I mean, it wouldn't be called a suicide mission if there was a good chance of survival..."

Tali twists around to face him. Up close the signs of worry are reflected on his face too, in the subtle turian way she's come to know. Tali frowns. "What's your point, Garrus?"

He looks down at his feet, arms dropping limply to his sides. He looks so dejected that Tali's own heart twinges, and she reaches out a finger, lightly brushing the scarred side of his face. "Garrus..."

He suddenly looks up at her, blue eyes flashing like stars. "Don't you get it? I can't loose you, Tali!" he practically yells, and his sub-vocals are a deep growl. He stares at her angrily for a moment, then hangs his head again. "I already lost you once," he says, so softly she has to strain to hear it. Tali reaches her hand behind his neck and pulls him in close, pressing his forehead to hers. Garrus squeezes his eyes shut, pulling her to him tightly as if she might vanish at any moment. "I can't loose you," he repeats, voice a whisper.

"Shh," murmurs Tali, stroking the back of his neck. Again she marvels at the way the hard angles of his plates fit comfortably against her softer skin. She breathes deep his scent, like leather and salt and something tangy and alien and wonderful. "You're right," she says softly. "We don't know what we're charging into."

She pulls back, looks up into his eyes. The predatory blue points gaze back at her, questioning. "I love you, Garrus," she says, and there's a twist in her gut as she feels the truth of those words. "I love you, and whatever it is we're facing, it's worth charging into if it means we can spend just one more moment together."

Garrus blinks, and with a slight movement he takes her hands in his own. "Agreed," he says, and this time his voice is a warm rumble. "I love you, Tali, and wherever this mission takes us, I've got your back."

Tali stands up on her tiptoes, kissing him gently on his mandible. "Yes, well," she murmurs softly. "Right now it looks like you've got my front."

Garrus nuzzles her, his tongue flicking across her neck. His talons skim down her naked waist, and she's suddenly very conscious of the naked part as Garrus's nimble blue tongue traces up the line of her jaw. His talons settle on her waist, and she kisses him full on the mouth, pressing into him with almost animal need. He steps back, caught off balance by the sudden force of the kiss, and then with a low growl he pushes them both back against the wall of the cabin, his hard mouth surprisingly tender against hers. Tali's questing fingers find the sensitive spot just under his fringe, and she is rewarded by his sharp intake of breath. She pulls away, gasping a little.

Garrus gestures at the green panel of the door with his free hand, the other fumbling at the fastener of his shirt. "You want me to, uh, you know..."

She nods vigorously, words somewhere else.

"Help me with this damn thing," he growls, reaching his arms around behind her and activating his omni-tool.

Tali undoes the last of his buttons as Garrus keys in the lock command, and as the door buzzes and the panel flashes orange she lets go of the last of her restraint and pounces on him.

…

Legion's standing, almost before it knows it, and suddenly it's just itself and John, standing in a room of emptiness, infinitely far apart. The furniture and the walls and the table are still there; they just don't matter very much. The deck stretches away, bridging vast reaches of space to where John stands, looking solid and fragile all at once.

…

Shepard looks across the deck to Legion, and he feels as if he's looking through the wrong end of a telescope. Little bits of the past start to float up to him in his memory, and he is hit with a sort of a delayed revelation; something that was sitting right in front of him all along but he never quite saw. All this talk of being alone, when he never really was. And it is crazy, and it is stupid, but Shepard looks at the man standing in front of him, and that's exactly what he sees.

A man of alloyed metal and pseudo-biotic tissue instead of skin, veins that run with electricity instead of blood. A being of quiet power and grace, somehow both strength and innocence too, vast and almost laughable, a warrior untouched by war. A man with a face and figure showing a plethora of emotions, hesitancy and anticipation and worry and hope.

…

John's eyes remain locked foward for a long, long moment, and then slowly he raises his hand out to the geth. Legion feels a pulse of happiness, the first tingles of joy mixing with the twisting apprehension deep inside it, and its hand half reaches, is half pulled through space toward John's. Their fingers brush, and it seems to Legion that a spark jumps between the synthetic and the organic, joining the two for the briefest of seconds. And then it is gone, vanished inside them somewhere, and their hands press together and clasp tightly, and Legion feels the warmth of John's palm, and the blue fire of his eyes as he gazes up at Legion, his face a mix of so many different things it can not decipher them.

"Legion," says Shepard. "I've been so blind." His voice shakes a little, and Legion sees none of the coolness and reserve he uses with the crew. The control and calm are absent like a discarded coat.

Legion sees this, sees how close John is to losing hold of himself, and from somewhere it finds something to say. "Shepard, the geth are built for logic and reasoning, not for organic things like emotions. We were designed by the creators as machines of servitude. We have not aspired to much more." It pauses. The words are coming now, from where it doesn't know, but they are coming nonetheless. The pressure of John's hand gives it confidence and it continues. "Each platform serves the goals of the consensus. We do not know if this is a goal of the consensus. It seems likely that it is not. But emotions are not a property of the consensus either, and..." The words finally stop, and Legion stands silent, not sure what to say next.

Shepard seems to sense this. "Do you... Can you feel, Legion?" he asks.

Legion flexes its fingers gently. "Feeling. Tactile input. Of course."

Shepard shakes his head. "I don't mean that. I mean feelings inside, like happiness and, and hope and sadness and things."

Legion thinks. It has been ignoring the undeniable fact of these "feelings," ignoring them up to a point. They are such an ungeth thing that accepting them seems akin to accepting not being geth, but Legion puts this nagging thought aside. Shepard's muscles are tensed slightly, Legion can feel it. His eyes are questioning, watching it carefully. "Sadness," Legion says finally. "We have felt sadness. Shepard. When you were seeking to destroy yourself with alcohol, and we were unable to help you, we felt sadness." Legion hangs its head, looking down at the panels of the deck. The powerless, useless feeling is still fresh in its memory. "When you were hurting yourself," it continues softly. "That is the time when we felt sadness, because we could not makeyou want to stop. We did not know how. We never felt happiness before joining the Normandy's crew. We felt it for the first time, Shepard. All the times we were with you, we are happy. We did not know why."

It looks up at John to see him blinking at something in his eye. He looks away quickly. "Legion..." he says, leaving the name in the air, a feeling without words.

Legion extends its free hand, and with a pounding nervousness in its chest, cups the side of John's face in its palm. Ever so gently, it moves his head back around to face it. The bristles of his unshaven cheek excite legion's hand, and the nervousness beats stronger. And then John's eyes, glistening with moisture, come back to touch its own, and the worry goes away.

Legion speaks again, and it finds its voice changing slightly, the pitch bending a little without being asked to. "We know now, John." Legion realizes that it has used Shepard's first name, and it doesn't care. "Hope. We never thought we would feel hope, because things are and are not. A prediction of the future may be made, but that is all. But we have learned that there are things in between.

"We feel hope now, John."

...

The moment stretches out elastically, filling time. A man and a machine stare into each others' eyes, oblivious of the universe.

A synthetic voice crackles out of a PA speaker in the wall. "We have reached the mass relay, Commander. Awaiting your go-ahead," says EDI.

Time begins to dissolve back into its ordinary state. Shepard feels it begin to flow around him again, the fuzzy stillness evaporating. "Legion," he says, and then stops. He doesn't have the words to say what needs to be said. He doesn't even know what that is, never mind how to say it. Whatever the connection is that he feels between them, he doesn't have a name for it yet.

Legion seems to sense his lack of words. "We must go, Shepard," it says. "But after the mission, perhaps we should talk."

Shepard smiles. "Yeah. I'd like that."

…

The Normandy makes the jump without a shudder. The journey is physically peaceful, but every time she does it Tali always has the feeling in the pit of her stomach, just for a second, of being in too many places at once. She feels that now, a little, unsettling lurch, and then space returns and slams into the view screen of the cockpit.

Space, or more accurately, the absence of space. For taking up nearly the entirety of the view screen is the massive, pitch-black bulk of a ship. A huge ship.

In the pilot's chair, Joker jumps and lets out an impressive stream of swearwords. All Tali can do is stare slack-jawed at the vessel before them. It's almost as long as a flotilla liveship, easily two kilometers from nose to engines. Its thrusters flicker on and off, making minute adjustments to its path, but the main drives stay dark. It floats on the void, seeming to ignore the Normandy as a large animal would ignore a fly.

To her left, Garrus frowns. "That's a turian carrier dreadnought," he says. "From the contact war. What's that doing here?"

Shepard shakes his head. He's leaning over the edge of Joker's chair, looking pensively out the view screen. It's just him, Garrus, Legion, Joker and her in the cockpit, unless you count the ever-present watch of EDI. "See if you can patch me through to their comm channels," he says to the pilot. "Let's at least see what they have to say for themselves before we start shooting."

"I don't think shooting at that thing is going to do us much good, Shepard," says Garrus. Tali has to agree; the carrier's sides look impenetrably, even to their newly-upgraded thanix cannons.

"At least this proves one thing," says Shepard.

"What?" asks Tali.

"It proves it's not the Batarians," says Shepard. "Or, at least not officially. I was afraid I had unearthed some kind of Batarian conspiracy, and if that was the case I would have notified the Alliance. But this looks like an independent group working outside the Hegemony."

Tali looks up at the dreadnought. It blots out the starlight as it slowly glides through the view screen. She swallows. "That doesn't really comfort me that much," she says.

The comm line crackles, but only turns up static. "No good, Commander," says Joker. "All frequencies are closed. Whoever they are, they don't feel like talking."

Shepard nods. "Didn't expect them to." He looks around the cockpit at his miniature assault team. "Garrus, you have any idea where we can land on this thing?"

"Let's see," says Garrus. "I think... Yes, there's a shuttle port in the front, by the nose. That's where most of the actual ship is. The rest is mainly carrier decks. This thing was designed to hold a hell of a lot of fighters. The inside is mostly empty space."

"Shepard, we would not advise a frontal assault." Legion's plates twitch. It strides closer to the screen. "Joker, please magnify the view." Joker complies, and Tali has to stop herself from reflexively stepping back as the carrier ship shoots closer to them, magnified large enough to fill the whole screen. Legion motions to the front of the ship. "Here, along the starboard side. Escape pods."

Tali looks closer. She sees a set of circular openings in a line across the hull, each filled with the nose of a pod. "How does that help us?"

"A precision strike could destroy one of the escape pods and rupture the hull at its weak point," explains Legion. "From there, we could perform a tactical insertion into the ship."

Shepard strokes his chin. "I like it," he says slowly. "They wouldn't expect us there, and it's likely that the escape pods would be attached by a side hall. We could be in there before they pin us down."

"But how long do we have to get inside?" asks Garrus. "They'll have contingency airlocks in every corridor, we'll have to get in before one locks us out."

Tali steps forward. "I can keep it open. I just need an uplink spot."

"Are you sure?" asks Shepard. "The ship is probably on a closed system. That could take time."

"We will assist you, Tali'Zorah." Legion turns its head toward her. "Our combined efforts will prove sufficient."

She nods acceptance. "Alright. Let's do this."

Shepard stands up fully. He looks slowly around at the squad, his eyes settling on each member briefly. Tali notices the way he lingers on Legion, and the flutter of response in the geth's face plates. Interesting... "I'm not one for speeches," he says. "But you need to know that what we do today matters. If this thing gets past us, it's headed for the Citadel. I don't need to tell you how bad that would be." He looks around at them one last time, and his face sets into a grim smile. "But I also need you to know that given my pick of the galaxy, there's no one else I would rather have on my side."

The cockpit is silent for a moment, then Garrus gives Shepard's shoulder a playful shove. "What the commander means is, 'let's get in there and kick some ass!'"

Tali smiles. When it comes to ass-kicking, she knows who's side she's on.

…

A/N: I had meant to publish only one more chapter, but it came out to be just way too damn long. It works out better this way too, since because of chapter 15 having two parts this is really only chapter 19. So, we have another chapter still to go. Dunn dunn dunn...